The Great Eccentric Appreciation Thread!! Or is it? No it isn't, I mean YES it is!!!

[waryan]

hi all, I had a curious question for you all - out of all of your reading have you ever come across an especially batty or eccentric character? a downright mad/spontaneous character? I started thinking and realized I couldn't name a true handsdown night/day, eccentric in all the works I've read - like a mad genius or a whimsical character, not beside Poe's narrators anywho! =) So let's all get together and in this thread, appreciate the true great eccentrics of literature!:smilielol5::cuss:

[Kyriakos]

Hm, how about Maldoror, in Lautreamont's "The songs of Maldoror"?

He is a sort of freak in whose rotten body small animals have formed nests, and all he wants to do is kill other people.

[Lord Macbeth]

Jack Tanner from Shaw's Man and Superman comes to mind, a roguish character, anyway, and says just about anything and acts verry eccentric at times...

Petruccio from Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew is one of my favorite characters and one of the most eccentric ever, he's just the embodiment of the word--name something you think goes with the being eccentric and he pretty much does it...

Ms. Favisham from Dicken's Great Expectations is pretty batty, leaving the house and cake and everything the way it was for her to-be wedding day when she was stood up...

Off the top of my head, those are who I can think of.

Oh--and Sherlock Holmes, of course, his character's written to be very eccentric in that gentleman-detective sort of way...watch one of the DEFINITIVE, ABSOLUTELY FLAWLESS Jeremy Brett adaptations on YouTube from his 1980s-90s time as The Great Detective of 221B Baker Street and you'll see what I mean.

[Lulim]

(...) He is a sort of freak in whose rotten body small animals have formed nests, and all he wants to do is kill other people.

Eeek -- sounds disgusting! What kind of literature is this? -- Horror?

As to eccentric characters in literature, John Raffles of Middlemarch comes to mind, although his appearance is only a brief one.

[Kyriakos]

It is a peripheral literature definately, but it was written in the middle of the 19th century, before the horror genre was that defined.
It is the sole (or one of two) work of Lautreamont in existence, since he died when he was extremely young. :)

[IceM]

Yossarian is an idiot. Everyone in Catch-22 is an idiot. But they're hilarious.

I thought the protagonist from Notes from Underground has a deranged, yet brilliant sense of understanding.

[Dark Muse]

I think one of the best mad genius eccentrics I have ever read is Maurice Conchis from The Magus

To name a few others which come to mind:

For mad genuius I would have to say Frankenstein or Dr. Jekyll/ Mr. Hyde

For batty eccentric the first name which springs to my mind is Miss Havisham from Great Expectations.

[Wilde woman]

One of the funniest and most eccentric characters I've ever read is the dragon from Gardner's Grendel. He not only assumes all the characteristics of the stereotypical mentor/prophet, but makes fun of philosophers like no one's business. The protagonist himself, Grendel, cannot figure out if the dragon is good or evil.


Everyone in Catch-22 is an idiot. But they're hilarious.

Yes! My favorite is Major Major.

Merlyn from the Once and Future King also springs to mind, and the eponymous protagonists from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Any number of Wilde's characters are also eccentric, but in a flippant Victorian sort of way.

[marcolfo]

Don Quijote de la Mancha